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The Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of
morality-namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents
normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations.
According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are
directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent
comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is
the domain of what we owe to each other, insofar as we are each
persons with equal moral standing. The book offers an
interpretative argument for the relational approach. Specifically,
it highlights neglected advantages of this way of understanding the
moral domain; explores important theoretical and practical
presuppositions of relational moral duties; and considers the
normative implications of understanding morality in relational
terms. The book features a novel defense of the relational approach
to morality, which emphasizes the special significance that moral
requirements have, both for agents who are deliberating about what
to do and for those who stand to be affected by their actions. The
book argues that relational moral requirements can be understood to
link us to all individuals whose interests render them vulnerable
to our agency, regardless of whether they stand in any prior
relationship to us. It also offers fresh accounts of some of the
moral phenomena that have seemed to resist treatment in relational
terms, showing that the relational interpretation is a viable
framework for understanding our specific moral obligations to other
people.
R. Jay Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument
against the common view that accountability requires freedom of
will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people
responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to
grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly. He
shows how these forms of rational competence are compatible with
determinism. At the same time, giving serious consideration to
incompatibilist concerns, Wallace develops a compelling diagnosis
of the common assumption that freedom is necessary for
responsibility.
Must we always later regret actions that were wrong for us to
perform at the time? Can there ever be good reason to affirm things
in the past that we know were unfortunate? In this original work of
moral philosophy, R. Jay Wallace shows that the standpoint from
which we look back on our lives is shaped by our present
attachments-to persons, to the projects that imbue our lives with
meaning, and to life itself. Through a distinctive "affirmation
dynamic," these attachments commit us to affirming the necessary
conditions of their objects. The result is that we are sometimes
unable to regret events and circumstances that were originally
unjustified or otherwise somehow objectionable.
Wallace traces these themes through a range of examples. A teenage
girl makes an ill-advised decision to conceive a child - but her
love for the child once it has been born makes it impossible for
her to regret that earlier decision. The painter Paul Gauguin
abandons his family to pursue his true artistic calling (and
eventual life project) in Tahiti--which means he cannot truly
regret his abdication of familial responsibility. The View from
Here offers new interpretations of these classic cases, challenging
their treatment by Bernard Williams and others. Another example is
the "bourgeois predicament": we are committed to affirming the
regrettable social inequalities that make possible the expensive
activities that give our lives meaning. Generalizing from such
situations, Wallace defends the view that our attachments
inevitably commit us to affirming historical conditions that we
cannot regard as worthy of being affirmed--a modest form of
nihilism.
For close to forty years now T.M. Scanlon has been one of the most
important contributors to moral and political philosophy in the
Anglo-American world. Through both his writing and his teaching, he
has played a central role in shaping the questions with which
research in moral and political philosophy now grapples.
Reasons and Recognition brings together fourteen new papers on an
array of topics from the many areas to which Scanlon has made
path-breaking contributions, each of which develops a distinctive
and independent position while critically engaging with central
themes from Scanlon's own work in the area. Contributors include
well-known senior figures in moral and political philosophy as well
as important younger scholars whose work is just beginning to gain
wider recognition. Taken together, these papers make evident the
scope and lasting interest of Scanlon's contributions to moral and
political philosophy while contributing to a deeper understanding
of the issues addressed in his work.
Normativity and the Will collects fourteen important papers on
moral psychology and practical reason by R. Jay Wallace, one of the
leading philosophers currently working in these areas. The papers
explore the interpenetration of normative and psychological issues
in a series of debates that lie at the heart of moral philosophy.
Part I, Reason, Desire, and the Will, discusses the nexus linking
normativity to motivation, including the relations between desire
and reasons, the role of normative considerations in explanations
of action, and the normative commitments involved in willing an end
(such as the requirement to adopt the necessary means). Part II,
Responsibility, Identification, and Emotion, looks at questions
about the rational capacities presupposed by accountable agency and
the psychic factors that both inhibit and enable identification
with what we do. It includes an interpretation of the Nietzschean
claim that ressentiment is among the sources of modern moral
consciousness. Part III, Morality and Other Normative Domains,
addresses the structure of moral reasons and moral motivation, and
the relations between moral demands and other normative domains
(including especially the requirements of living a meaningful human
life). Wallace's treatments of these topics are at once
sophisticated and engaging. Taken together, they constitute an
advertisement for a distinctive way of pursuing issues in moral
psychology and the theory of practical reason. The book articulates
and defends a unified framework for thinking about those issues,
while offering sustained critical discussions of other influential
approaches (by philosophers such as Korsgaard, McDowell, Nietzsche,
Raz, Scanlon, and Williams). It should be of interest to every
serious student of moral philosophy.
Reason and Value collects 15 new papers by leading contemporary
philosophers on themes from the work of Joseph Raz. Raz has made
major contributions in a wide range of areas, including
jurisprudence, political philosophy, and the theory of practical
reason; but all of his work displays a deep engagement with central
themes in moral philosophy. The subtlety and power of Raz's
reflections on ethical topics make his writings a fertile source
for anyone working in this area. Especially significant are his
explorations of the connections between practical reason and the
theory of value, which constitute a sustained and penetrating
treatment of a set of issues at the very center of moral philosophy
as it is practiced today. The contributors to the volume
acknowledge the importance of Raz's contributions by engaging
critically with his positions and offering independent perspectives
on the topics that he has addressed. The volume aims both to honour
Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and to
contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of his
work for the subject. Contributors: Michael E. Bratman, John
Broome, Ruth Chang, Jonathan Dancy, Harry Frankfurt, Ulrike Heuer,
Philip Pettit, Peter Railton, Donald H. Regan, T. M. Scanlon,
Samuel Scheffler, Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Michael Smith, Michael
Stocker, Michael Thompson, R. Jay Wallace.
Reason and Value collects 15 new papers by leading contemporary
philosophers on themes from the work of Joseph Raz. Raz has made
major contributions in a wide range of areas, including
jurisprudence, political philosophy, and the theory of practical
reason; but all of his work displays a deep engagement with central
themes in moral philosophy. The subtlety and power of Raz's
reflections on ethical topics make his writings a fertile source
for anyone working in this area. Especially significant are his
explorations of the connections between practical reason and the
theory of value, which constitute a sustained and penetrating
treatment of a set of issues at the very center of moral philosophy
as it is practiced today. The contributors to the volume
acknowledge the importance of Raz's contributions by engaging
critically with his positions and offering independent perspectives
on the topics that he has addressed. The volume aims both to honour
Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and to
contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of his
work for the subject.
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, which honor the American
scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner, are
presented annually at each of nine universities in the United
States and Great Britain. They were established at the University
of California, Berkeley, beginning in the 2000/1 academic year. The
Berkeley Tanner Lectures Series has been established in the belief
that these distinguished lectures, together with the lively debates
stimulated by their presentation in Berkeley, deserve to be made
available to a wider audience. The Practice of Value is an
exploration of a pervasive but puzzling aspect of our world: value.
At the core of the book are the Tanner Lectures delivered at
Berkeley in 2001 by Joseph Raz, who has been one of the leading
figures in moral and legal philosophy since the 1970s. His aim is
to make sense of the dependence of value on social practice,
without falling back on cultural relativism. In response, three
eminent philosophers, Christine Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, and
Bernard Williams, offer interestingly different approaches to the
subject. The book begins with an introduction by Jay Wallace,
setting the scene for what follows, and ends with a response from
Raz to his commentators. The result is a fascinating debate,
accessible to readers throughout and beyond philosophy, about the
relations between human values and human life.
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